


The Summer of the Switching Sickness

by FictionIsSocialInquiry



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Body Swap, F/M, Sex, barely there plot, basically a hot mess with loosely relevant UST, because i needed to get this trash out, some kisses and such, the spirits made them do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26848735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionIsSocialInquiry/pseuds/FictionIsSocialInquiry
Summary: He sighs. Loudly. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’ Katara peeks at him through her fingers. ‘First, we’re going to agree right now that we will never tell any of our friends about this. Ever. Especially Sokka and Toph. Deal?’Katara nods fervently. ‘Deal.’-The summer of the Switching Sickness puts a strain on relations between the Fire Nation and Southern Water Tribe... It's probably better for everyone involved if no one else finds out why.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 409





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko drops his head into his hands. ‘You need to pee?’
> 
> She doesn’t respond.
> 
> ‘How, um, dire is it?’
> 
> She shakes her head. ‘Not, um, emergency level. But, ah… soon.’
> 
> He sighs. Loudly. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’ Katara peeks at him through her fingers. ‘First, we’re going to agree right now that we will never tell any of our friends about this. Ever. Especially Sokka and Toph. Deal?’
> 
> Katara nods fervently. ‘Deal.’
> 
> ‘You’re going to go into the bathroom, stand in front of the toilet, close your eyes, and I’m going to do everything else. Okay?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure where this came from exactly but here we are. This is set some years after the war and is canon divergent. The basic premise is: Zuko and Katara come down with a case of switching sickness, an entirely ridiculous, tenuous plot point from yours truly which means they occasionally switch bodies. Because UST. Yup. That’s the level this is at.
> 
> Enjoy (if you can) a barely-there plot, confusing narrative shenanigans about whose body is whose, and maybe an international incident involving the Firelord and the Ambassador from the Southern Water Tribe.
> 
> (P.S. It was just recently brought to my attention that a story with a similar premise to this trashy one already exists in this fandom?? I’m bummed -.- I thought this idiocy was all my own, but there you go! Kudos to you, other author!)

‘The solstice?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You think the sun’s position in the sky could do _this_?’

‘It’s just a guess. Do I look like the damn Avatar to you?!’

It’s a rhetorical question but Katara answers anyway. ‘No, you don’t. But you sure don’t look like yourself!’

It’s strange, Katara’s intonation and Katara’s curled lip glaring out of his own face. It’s off-putting for more than the obvious reason (you know, the girl occupying _his_ skin; that should be upsetting enough on its own). It’s off-putting because the scowl sits so easily, so at home, on his brow. He doesn’t like the way her expressions twist the heavy skin of his scar.

He sighs and the pretty sound that usually makes his insides melt with adoration issues from his own mouth— _her_ mouth technically— and startles him. _Get a grip of yourself_. ‘Calm down.’

‘ _Calm down?_ ’ she hisses, craning to glower at him. ‘I just woke up in my friend’s body! How am I supposed to be calm right now?!’

He watches her throw his hands into the air and they both flinch when flames flicker from her fingertips.

‘Yeah that’s why you need to calm down,’ he says flatly, crossing his arms over his—

Oh.

_Oh._

‘But—but I wasn’t trying to bend!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he tells her around the lump in his narrow throat and the heat in his cheeks. ‘Firebending is about control. When you’re feeling emotional, it reacts. Try not to feel so…much.’

Her glower on his face is really something. He swears she’s wearing lines into the skin over his brow. ‘So what? I can’t feel anything while I’m you?’

‘Try breathing deeply,’ he advises and searches for somewhere safe to rest his hands. Not folded across the chest, that’s for sure. On the hips? Hmm, they’re soft and warm and… nope not the hips either. ‘Yep. Let’s both just breathe for a second and just… figure this out.’

Katara breathes but exhales a flame. She yelps— Zuko prays he never hears _that_ sound come out of his throat again— and holds a hand to her lip. ‘Ow! That hurt.’

He holds his arms awkwardly out away from the dangerous territory of the waterbender’s body. ‘I _told_ you to calm down!’

His eyes— her eyes— start watering. Agni, no… Was she crying? ‘It really hurts, Zuko…’

‘Okay, okay, hang on.’ He looks around wildly, heavy chestnut hair flying with the movement, and spies the pitcher of water beside his bed. The two of them are secreted away in Zuko’s rooms for the time being, but any moment now someone is going to come looking for the Firelord and…

Shaking his head, Zuko reaches for the water the way he would his own element. Healing. How hard could it be? With one of those sinuous flowy gestures he’d memorised a hundred times over, Zuko called to the water. It explodes up out of the pitcher, shattering it entirely and sending shards out in all directions. Katara, still cumbersome with his body, barely dodges the knife sharp handle.

They exchange a wide eyed look.

‘What are you doing?!’ she screeches, throwing her arms in the air. ‘That could have killed us!’

‘You—I—’ He points at her lip accusingly. ‘You’re hurt! I was going to heal you!’

‘Heal me?! You can’t even push and pull the water how in the name of Tui and La did you think you’d be able to heal anything?!’

A hesitant knock at the door interrupts the argument.

‘Um… Firelord Zuko? Is— er, everything okay, sir?’

He opens his mouth to tell his guards to _take a hike_ but Katara lunges for him, covering his mouth with her hand— _his_ hand. Her eyes are golden and stretched wide as saucers, even the scarred one. ‘Shh,’ she whispers and, turning to the door, clears her throat. ‘Everything is fine, er, guardsman. Please cancel my next meeting. I have, um, business with the Water Tribes.’

‘My next meeting _was with the Water Tribes_ ,’ he hisses around the hot, _very_ hot hand. She really needs to calm down.

‘With the Water Tribe Ambassador!’ Katara calls in a panicked tone. ‘There’s an um…’ Her face changes then. The anxiety replaced in an instant with a sly look that makes Zuko’s insides flutter. He _knows_ that look. It is entirely Katara. ‘I’m having second thoughts about the limits of the Southern Sea trade routes that I need to run by the Ambassador.’

Suddenly she doesn’t sound out of control at all. He should have known. Katara _would_ use a metaphysical crisis to push policy. Zuko levels her with a glower but she only winks, the fingers against his lips restraining his protest.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘See we’re not disturbed.’

‘Of course, my lord.’

Katara smirks at him, tapping him on the nose once as she withdraws her hand. ‘Okay, _Master Katara_ , let’s talk trade.’

‘Don’t you think there’s something a _little_ more pressing than our nation’s trade routes right now?’

She looks down at her hands, their pale, scarred skin, and grins. ‘Hang on, I want to try something.’ Without warning, she bends down and wraps her arms around his torso.

‘What— What are you doing?!’

She lifts him up, chuckling with his raspy laugh but Zuko is far from amused. He’s almost choking. This body is _reacting_. His nose is pressed into Katara’s neck, _his_ neck, and the scent is _doing_ things to this body. This scent… It isn’t something he’s smelled before, it’s almost fireflakes and whisky but smoky like the ocean fish the kitchen serve during the summer festivals. The scent sends his heart racing and the strangest full-body tingle from head to toe.

The press against this chest he was trying _really hard_ _not_ _to think about_ isn’t helping either.

‘P—Put me down,’ he gasps but the sound of that breathless voice sends his brain haywire. Over the past few years, he’s come to crave that breathlessness in the waterbender’s voice. There were guilty nights alone when her voice, breathless in his memories of their sparring bouts, was breathless for a decidedly less innocent reason in his imaginings and now… How embarrassing. His mind is aroused by this throat, his own gasping. This body…

The strangest thought occurs to him: This body is aroused by _his_ scent.

_Interesting_.

Katara lowers him with another laugh, ignorant of the complex series of fireworks short circuiting this body she was manhandling so casually. ‘Sorry, it just occurred to me that I could pick you up!’

If it wasn’t for the distracting flutter in his stomach, the strangely pleasant tingling in places he had too much honour to think about, he would have been amused. Instead, he takes a few moments to breathe, calming his prickling skin.

Katara peers down at him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine.’ He glances up at her accusingly. ‘Your body is weird. And don’t pick me up again.’

Katara crosses her arms over her chest and scoffs. ‘My body is _not_ weird.’

He smirks but finishes his breathing sets without voicing his suspicions. _Sure_. ‘Let’s sit down and try to work this out.’

‘Consider our place in the universe?’ she quips, grinning.

She’s teasing him. Great.

‘A few moments ago, you were so upset about this you burned your own mouth! Which, I want to remind you, is actually _my_ mouth. So yeah, I’d like to consider why in Agni’s four hells this has happened!’

She holds up her hands. ‘Jeez, alright, I get it.’

Outside the bedroom window, voices trickle in from the garden below. Zuko hunches his shoulders. ‘This is bad.’

‘It’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out.’ The grim set of her mouth belies the confidence of her words. ‘We’ll write to Aang, he’ll know what to do.’

‘Are you two talking again?’

She levels him with a glare. ‘I think our spirits being _in the wrong body_ kind of trumps an awkward break up, don’t you think?’

‘Right.’

‘We’ll write to Aang and…’ Her shoulders slump. ‘Even if he got a letter right now it would still take him days to get here. Who knows where he is.’

‘We could check the Fire Sage’s archives. They have accounts on every recorded phenomena in there.’

‘Zuko, I’ve been in that library. It would take us weeks. And wouldn’t it look strange if the Firelord and Southern Ambassador suddenly became obsessed with reading the old archives?’

‘Urg! I wish Uncle was here.’ He clenches his tiny Water Tribe fists around his long chocolatey hair and immediately became entangled. ‘How do you deal with all this hair? You make it look effortless but— ouch!— it keeps getting in the way!’

Katara favours him with a noise of disapproval and bats his hand out of the way, her own making quick work of the silky strands. ‘Try braiding it, it helps. Comb it first though.’

He looks at her like she’s suggested asking Sokka to perform at the upcoming Fire Festival gala. ‘Yeah, cause part of my education involved _braiding my hair_.’

He shoos her hands away and Katara gasps. ‘Excuse me! That’s _my_ hair you’re pushing me away from.’

‘Well right now it’s _my_ body and I’ll do with it what I want!’ A pregnant pause falls between them. ‘Just don’t touch my hair! Your weird body gets all shivery.’

Katara just snorts, a strange smile playing around her mouth. ‘What are you talking about? That feels great! Why do you think I’m always fiddling with my hair? It feels nice when someone plays with it.’

_I can’t deal with how nice it feels when you touch me_. ‘It’s annoying.’

‘ _You’re_ the one who was getting tangled in my hair!’

Zuko sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘I think we need to accept that we’re going to be stuck like this for the foreseeable future.’

She looks around the bedroom uncertainly. ‘How long do you think that will be?’

Zuko narrows his eyes, crossing his arms over his— nope nope, arms by sides. ‘How am I supposed to know? Why?’

‘I, ah…’ She points to the closed bathroom door. ‘You sort of pushed on my bladder just then—’

‘ _You_ invaded _my_ space and picked me up without asking!’

‘—and now I need to um, water the ostrich horse. Well, your body needs to water the ostrich horse.’ He doesn’t like seeing his face blushing this hard. It is not a good look on him though from the odd tingling response in the waterbender’s stomach, her body doesn’t agree.

Zuko drops his head into his hands. ‘You need to pee?’

She doesn’t respond.

‘How, um, dire is it?’

She shakes her head. ‘Not, um, emergency level. But, ah… soon.’

He sighs. Loudly. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’ Katara peeks at him through her fingers. ‘First, we’re going to agree right now that we will _never_ tell any of our friends about this. Ever. Especially Sokka and Toph. Deal?’

Katara nods fervently. ‘Deal.’

‘You’re going to go into the bathroom, stand in front of the toilet, close your eyes, and I’m going to do everything else. Okay? Stop blushing so much you look ridiculous!’

Katara shakes her head, her eyes wide. ‘I can’t help it! I’m embarrassed! This is _embarrassing!_ ’

‘For both of us!’ he retorts, glaring at her. ‘It’s my body! I don’t want you seeing my… you know.’

As though the thought has only just occurred to her, Katara looks down. Less than an hour ago, he had burst into his room to shake awake his own body so Katara only wore his silk sleep pants. No shirt. She stares down the flat chest and abdomen of his body at the outline of _something_. She didn’t usually have a _something_. Now there was—

‘What are you looking at?!’ Zuko demands, his own cheeks flaming red. He snaps his fingers under her nose. ‘Hey! Stop it!’

Katara looks up at him with wide eyes. ‘You’ve… I’ve… It’s…’ She buries her face in her hands again. ‘Urg, this is not happening. This is so not how I thought this would happen. Okay, okay. Let’s go with your plan. We go in, I close my eyes, you… position. We’re done.’

‘Maybe we should add to the deal that _we_ never talk about this ever again afterwards.’ He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Okay. We can do this.’

They both eye the bathroom with deep distrust.

‘I’m, um, I’m going to put a shirt on first,’ Katara says and stumbles across the room to his closet. ‘Tui and La, Zuko, you’re actually really clumsy.’

He trails her, pushing her aside to pick out a plain red shirt. ‘I am not. you’re just not used to a bigger body. Look, I’m perfectly coordinated in yours.’ He tosses the shirt from one hand to the other before giving it to her. ‘I bet I could even bend…’

Katara pulls the shirt over her head and shakes her head. ‘No way. Did you forget the pitcher? No bending!’

He eyes her, a smirk creeping up his cheeks. ‘What about those yoga stretches you do in the volcanic steam caves? I bet I could do that one where you touch your—’

‘You even _think_ about touching _anything_ and I’ll burn everything. _Everything_ , Zuko.’

He bites back his growing smile but gestures her towards the bathroom. ‘Come on, let’s get this over with.’

Zuko opens the door and the white tiled room— usually a welcome escape from his ministers needing something from him— has never looked less inviting. They linger in the doorway, the privy, against the far wall, gleamingly clean.

‘Remember the deal,’ he mutters, leading the way to the toilet.

Katara stops in front of it, breathing out harshly, her face still beet red. She swings her arms nervously. ‘Should I undo the pants? Or you?’

‘Me. Definitely me.’ He glances at her face as he begins unbuttoning his favourite sleep pants. ‘Are your eyes fully closed? You have to keep them closed.’

‘Yes, yes of course they’re—’ She gasps and Zuko knows why. As he’d undone the third and final button his hand glanced against... There. If his body is reacting to Katara’s body the way hers was when she’d picked him up, he could only imagine what she was feeling now.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he mumbles, checking her eyes are still closed before dropping the pants.

‘You know what? I, um, I don’t need to pee that badly. I really don’t. False alarm.’ She bends down, reaching blindly for the pants. ‘Can you— just pull them back—’

‘Katara.’

‘No, really, I—’

‘You’re going to have to go eventually. Do you really want to have to go through all this again?’

She stands hesitantly. ‘I’m not… not used to my, um, feelings being so… apparent.’

Zuko glances at the half hard cock, his own, and wonders if you could actually die from humiliation. ‘Hold… Just hold still okay?’

‘Zuko…’

But he takes his cock, ignoring the shudder that runs the length of her body, and aims it downwards. ‘Okay. You’re good.’

A hand comes up and grips his wrist, the one holding his cock. He watches the long pale fingers engulf the dusky skin of Katara’s wrist. In another life, in another place, he prays he is fortunate enough to be in his own body with the waterbender’s hand wrapping around his—

‘Zuko.’

His cock isn’t helping the situation. It’s hard, harder than it has any right to be. Zuko swallows thickly and silently asks Agni what he has done wrong in his twenty two years to warrant this fate.

‘I’m going… I’m going to open my eyes.’

_What?_ he thinks.

‘Why?’ his mouth says.

‘Just… please. Let me.’

_No_ , he thinks.

‘Okay,’ his mouth whispers.

She blinks down at him, her cheeks still stained red, but there’s something else in her flush other than humiliation. She swallows and glances down to where he still holds her, where her hand holds him. For a long moment she only looks but then his cock twitches and she gasps, her hips pressing involuntarily forward into Zuko’s hand.

He lets go, stumbling backwards into the sink. For all the grace and control he thought he’d had over her body moments ago, now he has nothing but racing, tingling veins and a breath he can’t catch.

‘Zuko…’ Katara approaches him slowly, biting her bottom lip, _his_ bottom lip.

Something pulses low. And again.

She crouches down before him, her eyes over bright, a shy smile in the corner of her mouth. ‘I want to try something,’ she says in a deceptively innocent tone. Zuko has mixed feelings about that tone. Even in the cadence of his own rasping voice, he knows that tone has the power to destroy him.

He wets his lips, keeping his shaking hands in his lap so they won’t do something stupid like touch his own cock again with these fingers, these powerfully curious fingers. ‘What?’ he asks but it comes out nearer a squeak. ‘What do you want to try?’

She cups his jaw in her hand and sparks jump between their skin. They each draw in a breathless gasp at the sensation. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Always.’ She knows now, right? She must.

He doesn’t move but she says it anyway. ‘Hold still, okay?’

The last thing Zuko feels before his eyes slide closed is the cold tiles beneath him and the burning palm on his cheek. The last thing he sees before his eyes slide closed is his own face, leaning forward.

When their lips touch, fireworks couldn’t have produced a more combustive explosion. For a dizzy, sickening moment, Zuko thinks he is seeing double but Katara’s gasp and the urgency of her kiss drive everything but her lips from his mind. These lips he’d spent years becoming distracted by in meetings, distracted by when she was away and he read her letters, imagining how she would have spoken the words to him.

_These lips_.

He doesn’t realise he’s groaned it aloud until she shudders and reaches up to drag him closer, her breathless chuckle staining the air between them. He follows her down, the hand on her cheek running down her neck, pulling her closer. His cock aching, straining—

_Wait_.

He pulls back suddenly, blinking down at the waterbender frowning up at him, her lips gleaming and swollen. _Her_ lips. _Her_ chestnut hair. _Her_ blue eyes. _Her_. ‘Zuko…’

He laughs and it’s his own throaty laugh. Pulling her to her feet, he lifts her and presses her back onto the lip of the counter. ‘Good idea, waterbender,’ he mutters into her lips as he kisses her again. Deeply. He wants her to not forget this. If this is all he ever gets of her, the only moment between them of passion and intimacy of the kind he’s craved ever since Mai told him he was in love with another girl and to _just admit it already_ … If this is all they get.

He wants her to know. He wants her. He wants her to understand. Just this once.

He’s surprised by her tongue. He’s never been met like this, matched like this. He plunges forward, licking into her like he’s the desert and she’s the rain and she, in turn, blazes past his lips.

When she moans, the sound vibrating from her lips to his, he snarls and presses his hips into the cradle of her thighs.

Katara gasps like there’s lightning in her veins. ‘Mm…’

He’s breathing heavily, breathing like he’s just completed a set of advanced bending forms he practices each morning. Zuko presses his forehead against Katara’s, forcing himself to give her space, leaning back enough that she can get away. If she wants.

Once more he kisses the corner of her mouth, her closed eye lids, her temples, her… He presses his mouth into the hair by her temple and whispers, ‘Keep your eyes closed.’

She nods. She’s trembling, her whole body, everywhere it’s touching him, is trembling. It takes all his strength, all the hard sought control he learned in firebending to kiss her one last time and step away. He’s unsteady when he bends to pick up his pants, slides them on, buttons them over the painful straining of his cock.

He takes a moment, one more, to take her in. Her chest is rising and falling quickly, her lips are the colour of his nation. Zuko exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair. ‘Okay,’ he croaks.

Blearily, she opens her eyes.

They’re still blue but her pupils are so wide they’re closer to midnight than daytime skies. ‘What’s wrong?’

_What’s wrong?_ ‘Nothing. I feel amazing.’ He laughs shakily, nervous now that she knows. She _knows_ how he’s been hungering for her. ‘Great actually. Are you okay?’

She’s still frowning. ‘Why are you over there?’ Her eyes trail down his body and Zuko pulls the hem of his shirt a low as it will go. ‘Why are you wearing pants again?’

His brain is functioning at half capacity. Less. A fifth, an eighth. Systems are offline. Error… ‘We… We’re us again,’ he says stupidly, unnecessarily. She can see that. She can see.

‘I know.’ She sits up, slips down off the counter, takes a hesitant step forward. ‘I thought…’ Her face falls like snow melting into water. Then she’s forcing a smile onto her face and Zuko doesn’t understand. _What’s wrong?_ he wants to ask. _How can I fix it?_

‘What’s…?’

She’s squinting at him, her cheeks flushed and Zuko takes an involuntary step forward. ‘I just… I thought…’ She gives a nervous laugh. ‘I was just wondering why you stopped.’

‘Why I stopped?’

‘Kissing. Why you stopped… kissing me.’

He glances out the window, back at her, up at the pressed metal ceiling, back at those probing blue eyes… ‘I didn’t want to, um, take liberties. With you. If you didn’t… want. To.’

Katara laughs and even Zuko cracks a smile. ‘Was I not clear enough? Do you want explicit consent, Firelord?’ She drifts a step closer. Her fingers trailing up his red cotton shirt. He catches them when they reach his chest and her grin broadens. ‘Yes, Zuko, I want you to keep kissing me.’

He doesn’t remember deciding to but he’s kissing her again and she’s climbing him, her hands twisted in the soft hair at the back of his head while his slide down, grip her round, fleshy arse and press her closer. _More._

‘Kissing?’ he manages to ask when she breaks from his mouth long enough for him to form words. ‘Just kissing, right?’

The Southern Water Tribe Ambassador looks at him and presses her hips into his, grinning when he snarls out an expletive. ‘For now.’

She takes his hand, pulling him after her back into his bedroom. ‘For now?’

Zuko stiffens when she turns to him and grips him through his sleep pants. ‘Is there something else you _need_ right now, Zuko?’

He can’t think. He’s darkly delighted at this side to her, this teasing, confident way she sketches the shape of him with soft touches then purposeful strokes and he _can’t think_. ‘Mmph.’

‘What was that, Firelord?’ she whispers, biting her bottom lip and he’s captivated. No wonder he’d never been able to capture the Avatar, not when his companion was the dictionary definition of captivating. He couldn’t have moved away if he tried. ‘What do you need?’

_Control_. He used to be good at it. Before he knew what Katara tasted like, what her hand around his cock felt like. She was all around him, like the tide. He was drowning. She was drowning him.

He grabbed her hips, pulling her flush against him, trapping her hand between them while he sucked kisses into her neck—

A brash knock at the door.

Zuko would _burn_ the guard who interrupted him now.

‘Zuko? You feeling okay, buddy?’

Their faces fall at the same time. They can’t jump apart fast enough. ‘Sokka?’ Zuko calls, clearing his throat.

‘Yeah, can I come in? The Tribal Council is confused about why you had to cancel our meeting this morning only to meet with our Ambassador. You know what they’re like. All heartbroken, thinking the Firelord is playing favourites with the Southern Water Tribe. Is Katara in there?’

The Ambassador in question points at the closet. ‘Pants! Proper pants!’ she whisper-commands before turning to the door. ‘We’re just in the middle of something, Sokka,’ she calls, brushing her hair back and approaching the door. Zuko hid behind his closet door, yanking stiff sparring trousers up over his sleep pants. ‘It’s the South Sea trade routes again. We’re nearly done.’

‘Uh huh,’ the Water Tribe warrior drawls and Zuko’s face is flame red. ‘Well when you two finish _nailing_ out the details, the Council are convening, and you should both be there.’

Katara whispers something that sounds like, ‘I’m going to kill you, _keep your voice down_.’ Sokka, however, sounds concerningly chipper. That’s not good. For anybody. _Especially me_ , the Firelord thinks.

‘I’ll let them know you’ll be there in five,’ the Water Tribe man hollers and they can hear the satisfied, triumphant footfalls as he marches away, down the corridor.

Zuko feels a little queasy. He peers around his closet at the waterbender, rigid and clenching her fists by the bedroom door. ‘Katara?’

‘I’m going to kill him,’ she decides, yanking open the door and marching after her brother.

Snatching his formal robes from their hanger, Zuko follows her at a sprint. Either he’s about to cause an international incident or prevent one, either way, he better be dressed to do it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Come here.’ She tugs him forward, nearer. ‘This is an offering to whichever spirit is causing our souls to switch bodies. This is a prayer, a holy act.’
> 
> He’s spellbound, caught on her every word. ‘Okay.’
> 
> This close, she can see that he’s trembling. ‘Kiss me.’
> 
> ‘I thought you said this was a prayer?’
> 
> ‘The prayers of my people take many forms.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have goldilocks23 to thank for this quick turn around on chapter two! She answered the beta call and supported Author to get this over the line of Barely Passable for Human Consumption. It’s important to me that you know that we hosted an impromptu Male Orgasm Sex Ed over on Discord btw. So that I could figure out how to write a woman, inhabiting a man’s body, experiencing the male orgasm. That is all. Peace.

It happens a second time later that night.

Zuko never did find time to go to the toilet, it seems. When Katara wakes up as Firelord, dozing at his desk sometime before midnight, she curses Yue, Hei Bai, and the Painted Lady because she has to pee _again_ and she did not sign up for this.

She takes a moment to miss her own genitals— neat, tucked away, user-friendly— before heaving herself upright and locking herself in the toilet that adjoins the Firelord’s study.

It’s simpler this way, she tells herself. Simpler if she just does the business herself. Less awkward. Less likely that she’ll end up making out with her friend with no pants on, indulging the crush that persistently refuses to go away. If she gets this out of the way… A grin slides up her face, tugging at the hard skin of Zuko’s scar. If she gets this out of the way, perhaps she can go wake Zuko up. A kiss worked last time. Lucky guess, it had been, but a deliciously pleasant way to spend the morning, embarrassing brother interruptions aside.

Katara remembered the Old Stories, the tales of ancient ice shamans who learned secret body wisdoms, rituals of sex and death, bodily enlightenment that listened to the wisdom of flesh.

That’s all she’d done that morning in Zuko’s bathroom, when he’d brushed against that horribly sensitive flesh. She listened to the fire in his body burning for her own blue eyes, her dusky hand that wrapped around…

She closes her eyes against the memories when her cock twitches and stirs. ‘Not now,’ she begs, struggling to untie the multitude of knots that secures these heavy formal robes. It takes minutes, way more than one or even five, but she has her pants around her ankles and the uncooperative cock in hand.

She laughs, giddy, as she points it at the privy. She tries not to think about it, that this is Zuko’s, that she’s woken up from dark lit dreams that feature _this_ flesh and these hands and this tongue waking a symphony of pleasure in her body.

No. This is not how she imagined touching him for the first time. This is just… peeing.

‘Please don’t miss,’ she whispers, then shivers at the sound of Zuko’s voice.

—

She doesn’t see anyone between Zuko’s study and her bedroom, for which she is grateful; she’s not sure she can do small talk right now.

She’s also not sure she got Zuko’s pants tied up quite right. How does he live like this?

She doesn’t knock when she arrives at her apartments in the diplomats’ accommodation suites; the last thing they need after the _mess_ Sokka made this morning is Zuko’s body seen sneaking into Master Katara’s rooms at this ungodly hour.

_‘I found them, Dad,’ Sokka had announced as he preceded his sister and the Firelord into the meeting room. ‘Katara and Zuko were just hashing out some details. Privately.’_

She hadn’t killed her brother.

But she’s tempted.

Sorely tempted.

Distracted, she stumbles into the door of her lodgings with a resounding bang. ‘Dung beetles,’ she swears, wrenching open the handle. The time for stealth is gone.

It’s dark in the receiving room beyond the hallway, her private parlour. She’d hosted the Ba Sing Se delegates here only last week. Her maid had helped her decorate the room with rock crystals Toph sent from wherever she and Aang were roaming these days, the last remnants of their gang who have yet to settle down.

Katara takes a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness— she’s tempted to light a fire over her palm but who is she kidding? She’d probably burn herself and her rooms to ashes. Her left eye, the scarred one, is more slitted than her right. It takes longer to adjust to the low light in this moonlight world of greys and blacks. It’s a wonder he’s as stealthy as he is with the fuzzier vision and lagging reflexes of this injured eye.

She doesn’t need another reason to admire her friend, but in the dark of her suite, she does.

Katara’s heartbeat is a little less than steady as she approaches her bedroom, her clumsy hold on his long, pale fingers fumbling at the brass handle. The door swings open on well-oiled hinges and she peers into the room beyond.

Her bedroom is lighter than the parlour, bathed in the cool moonlight streaking in from the open balcony door. The light falls across the four-poster bed made of blue and white linens, a wolf pelt over the foot of the bed.

She can see her loose hair spilling across the pillows and swallows; this body has _reactions_ to her hair. Unbidden, the image of it wrapped around these pale hands, of it trailing sleepily through these fingers rises with a faint blush.

Katara closes the door quietly behind her.

‘Zuko,’ she calls in a whisper that barely carries across the room. Then a little louder, ‘Zuko.’

When the sleeping figure doesn’t stir, she takes the few stumbling steps between them and crouches by her body in the bed. It’s still strange to see herself like this, through the eyes of another rather than reflected in a mirror or the surface of a pond. Stranger still to feel the cacophony that the sight of her, asleep and peaceful, causes in this skin. Zuko’s body goes all soft and buzzes with energy all at once.

She’s fairly sure she knows what that means. She could guess, anyhow.

‘Hey, Zuko.’ She reaches out and brushes a hand lightly across the sleeping forehead.

His eyes tighten for a moment before blinking open and staring uncomprehendingly up into his own face. ‘Don’t freak out,’ she whispers in that raspy voice that sends shivers up her spine. ‘But this is going to be a problem.’

He blinks once, twice, and a scowl darkens his face, _her_ face. ‘Agni dammit, again?’ he curses and his voice, even in her body, is hoarse with sleep. He sits up and the blankets slide down before Katara can think to warn him.

‘Um—’

He makes a strangled sound, too loud, and freezes, staring in growing horror at his bare chest. Well… _her_ bare chest, really.

Katara grabs the sheet and yanks it up, glaring at him. ‘Oh, come on, it’s not like you haven’t seen breasts before, jeez. Hold the blankets up while I find you a shirt.’

Gingerly, he takes the rumpled covers and closes his eyes, breathing thickly. ‘Why is this happening?’ he whispers while Katara yanks a clean shift from the chest of drawers by the bed.

‘I think it has something to do with sleep.’

He glances at her desperately. ‘Sleep?’

‘I went to bed hours ago and you must have fallen asleep at your desk a while ago because my neck,’ she stands to stretch it, ‘is killing me. You really shouldn’t do that, Zuko. It’s not good for you.’

He looks dumbly between her face and the pale shift. ‘I… I had work to do.’

Katara rolls her eyes, the scarred one twinging as she does. ‘You _always_ have work.’

He takes the shift, hesitating a moment before letting the sheet drop and pool around his lap. Here he stiffens. ‘You’re… you’re not wearing underclothes at all.’

Katara bites her lip. ‘I thought I would be sleeping alone tonight.’

He holds her gaze as he pushes back the blankets entirely, kneeling up to pull the shift on over his head. Katara admires her own body in the moonlight, her blood racing with this body’s reaction to her own. There was a story about a shaman of her tribe from countless eons ago who learned to take refuge in the bodies of others. He learned from these fleshy homes, learned the lessons of a stranger’s heart, a stranger’s muscle memory, until the practice was outlawed along with bloodbending.

As she feels Zuko’s body respond to the stretch and shimmy of her own, she is reminded of desert plants blooming under rare rainfall. She presses a hand over this heart, his heart, and resists the urge to lean forward, to kiss, to touch.

It makes her head spin, this firebender’s passion.

He wants her. Or at least his body does.

‘These Water Tribe clothes are so Agni damn tight,’ he’s grumbling as he finally pulls the shift down over his hips. ‘Why don’t you people use buttons or ties?’

She shakes her head, clears her throat before responding. ‘Because in the snow, seams in clothes let the cold in.’

‘I’ll assign you a tailor tomorrow,’ he says in that Firelord tone that means getting things done. ‘You don’t need to worry about the cold here.’

He sits back, crossing his legs in front of him and gestures to the bed beside him. ‘I feel kind of silly offering you a seat in your own bedroom.’

Katara huffs a laugh and crawls onto the bed beside him, mirroring his pose. ‘How do you think I felt just now when I had to pee? I’m adding a new condition to the deal: Until we figure out how to stop this… whatever this is, you need to keep your bladder as empty as possible.’

He glances at her and away. ‘We know how to reverse it,’ he mutters, studying the embroidered waves in the coverlet.

She leans forward, pressing a quick peck to his lips before rearing back out of reach. There it is again, that same electric fire she’d felt that morning in the bathroom. It swirls inside of her but settles after a moment, unfinished, unsatisfied.

‘What—? _Warn_ me before you do that!’ Zuko is spluttering, his cheeks deep red now, blue eyes wide as the sea.

Katara ignores her own racing pulse. ‘It didn’t work.’

‘No kidding!’

‘No, Zuko, listen.’ She looks at him imploringly, her palms clammy. ‘This morning… We kissed for a while. And not just a peck. It was… intense, wasn’t it? Not just a peck.’

He watches her closely, his characteristic intensity written on her brow. ‘We made out.’

‘We made out,’ she agrees and glances down. ‘It was…’ _Toe-curlingly amazing, paradigm shifting, mind bending_ — ‘nice. Really nice. But it only gave us the day back in our own bodies.’

He blinks once. ‘Yeah, it was nice.’

She waits but he doesn’t say anything more. ‘I, er, I might be wrong, but I thought maybe you… I thought there was a mutual, um, attraction? Maybe.’ She drops her eyes to the bed between them; why have the spirits done this to her? This is painfully awkward, speaking the thousand tiny moments between them that make her heart beat faster. ‘Is that— I mean, it’s okay if you don’t, I only—’

‘I do.’

She looks up sharply, her cheeks are burning but so are his. And his _eyes_. ‘You do?’

He makes a sound back in his throat. ‘I’ve liked you for a long time, Katara.’

 _He likes…_ She blinks once before a cheek-splitting grin breaks over her face. ‘Oh. Wow. Really? Cause you’re always so… busy when I visit. I thought…’

He’s shaking his head, slowly. ‘It’s… distracting. When you visit. You distract me. Sometimes, when I have to get work done…’ He glances down at her hand, where it lays in her lap. ‘I had to stop asking my aide to schedule so many meetings with you. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. Make it awkward.’

They both grin at the irony and Katara touches his arm. ‘How long?’

He clenches his teeth and looks away when he says, ‘A while.’

She worries her lip between her teeth. ‘How long?’

‘Years, Katara.’

She is struck dumb. _Years?_ He’s liked her for years? Years spent with what’s-his-name, the earthbender with golden eyes and a laugh that reminded her of—

‘Will you say something?’ he demands but she hears the note of insecurity; he’s pleading.

‘I was just thinking I wasted so much time thinking you weren’t interested. Zuko, I’ve wanted you since I was fifteen, when you took lightning for me.’

He makes this noise, as though he’s choking, like the air is strangling him. ‘But you— Aang? That earthbender? That tool from the Northern Water Tribe!’

‘Please don’t remind me about Tohhak,’ she moans, dropping her face into her hands. ‘That was one drunken night that went on _way_ longer than it should have.’

‘Since the comet,’ he’s muttering, dazed.

She nods and reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ears, except her hair is tied back, supporting a crown. ‘So—So I was thinking… You know those old Water Tribe stories I told you today? About the ancient shamans who could switch bodies?’

‘Yeah.’

She exhales in a rush. ‘Okay, this is going to sound crazy but they had these… um, ritual _practices_. For all sorts of things— fertility, for a short winter, for a good hunt, stuff like that. But there’s this one story…’

He’s staring. She can’t look at him while she says this; the staring is distracting. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s kind of… a sacrifice.’ It’s not, not really, but she can’t explain it any better than that.

‘A sacrifice?’ He’s trying not to be judgemental; she can tell. But the disbelief is written all over his face. ‘Like the kill a goat-hound over an altar kind of sacrifice?’

Katara clears her throat, staring at the canopy above their heads. ‘No. No, not quite that kind of sacrifice, although it will involve blood…’

He doesn’t look reassured. ‘What are you talking about?’

This isn’t working. She can’t explain it. She just has to show him. ‘You… This morning, you wanted more, right? More than kissing…’

He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. In any other circumstance, Katara might laugh at the quintessential Zuko expression of befuddlement on her own face.

He clears his throat and looks away, nodding.

‘Me too,’ she says, rewarding his honesty with her own. ‘I still do. Do, er, you? Would you?’

‘Are you asking me if I want to have sex with you?’

‘Very awkwardly, yes. That’s what I’m asking.’

He glances at her as though she’s said something stupid, something of Sokka proportions. ‘Yes, Katara.’

Her heart thrills and the eerily independent flesh between her legs twitches at the implication. She swallows the nerves tingling in her throat and pulls at his arm until he’s close. So close.

‘Katara…’

She echoes her words from this morning, ‘Do you trust me?’

He lifts a hand to cup her cheek, his eyes searching hers. ‘With my life.’

She grips the blanket beneath them to still her hand’s shaking. ‘In that drawer behind you, there’s a bone knife.’

‘This?’

She takes it from him in one hand, catches his retreating hand in the other. ‘The kiss of blood is an ancient ritual,’ she tells him through numb lips. ‘They say that when the blood of those who feel passion for one another meets, the spirits can move mountains in the physical world.’

He drops his gaze long enough to study the bone knife by his wrist. ‘You think we can summon a spirit?’

‘I think we’re experiencing something from the Old Stories,’ she says, despite the blush in her cheeks. ‘Don’t you think the solutions from the Old Stories might be worth a try?’ He’s silent for too long so she asks again, ‘Do you trust me?’

Zuko nods and she can feel the water in her body tremble with the movement.

‘Hold still.’

She draws the knife across his palm, deep enough for a sluggish ooze of blood to pool there. She slices her own hand, wincing at the sting, and holds it out towards him. An offering.

‘What do I do?’

‘Put your cut over mine.’

He raises his hand tentatively, a single red drop landing on the bed between them, before placing his wound over hers.

‘I can feel it,’ he whispers, wide-eyed. ‘Your blood and mine. I can feel it… pulsing.’

Something catches in the back of Katara’s throat and for a moment she misses the constant, cool presence that is her bending sense. ‘Come here.’ She tugs him forward, nearer. ‘This is an offering to whichever spirit is causing our souls to switch bodies. This is a prayer, a holy act.’

He’s spellbound, caught on her every word. ‘Okay.’

This close, she can see that he’s trembling. ‘Kiss me.’

‘I thought you said this was a prayer?’

‘The prayers of my people take many forms.’

Her heartbeat drowns out any doubt when he takes the back of her head in his free hand and pulls her lips against his. All air rushes out of her lungs, all thoughts shushed to silence; only the beating of their blood and the whisper of the kiss remains.

Once, when she was a child experimenting with the magic she could coax from water, her bending felt like the heady rush of wine in the veins or vertigo on the senses. It was her first brush with pleasure and all the ways her body was built to feel it. The lessons transcend her flesh because here, encased in the body of another, her nerves burst with blinding light.

Zuko is forceful; perhaps she should have expected that. He turns her head, commands the kiss, holds her in place with a hand tangling in the short hairs at the back of her neck. This body is _alive_ on the softness of the fingers stroking it, their decisiveness, the way they flirt with her hemlines.

He breaks the kiss just enough to pant, ‘We’re still—’ He bites at her lips, his forehead pressing _hard_ against hers; she’s grateful for the grounding ‘—Not ourselves.’

His voice is breathless as deep sea creatures; torn and _ruined_.

Their faintly-bleeding hands are still clasped together. Katara tugs him nearer, using this body’s strength— that pull to movement and action that simmers right beneath the skin— to pull him into her lap, tug his hips down over the aching in her—

‘ _Fuck_.’ He snarls the word against her mouth, raising their bloodied hands to press them into the wall above their heads. ‘Your body—’ he circles his hips, slowly, drunkenly, against the hardness between her legs ‘— feels _everything_.’

She chuckles but it’s weak; anything that isn’t the dark fire brewing between their bodies feels like a waste of time.

‘For a man, it’s… singular. One lute player.’ His mouth is plucking at hers, small rasping growls stealing her breath between words. ‘But this… Fuck, this is like a whole orchestra in my blood.’

For her, it feels like she cannot talk. It feels like the firebender wearing her body is too far away. She steals back her hand and it searches restlessly at his hips, gripping them, squeezing, pulling. _Spirits, please, closer_. She grinds into him again, ruthlessly, desperately.

Zuko groans, his blue eyes falling closed as pleasure suffuses his expression. ‘ _Uh_ , that feels so…’

She doesn’t care how it feels. She wants it again. Swallowing his words, she yanks his mouth back to hers and wrestles control.

He doesn’t cede it easily.

But, for now, Katara is stronger and the weight of the aching between her legs is making her vision fuzzy around the edges. Perhaps it’s this body, or her own desperate longing, but she can’t stop grinding against Zuko, can’t help the feverish desires flickering through her brain.

_Kiss his nipples. Shove the shift out of the way and taste him. Stroke his insides. Take him._

And overpowering it all, the urge to—

‘ _Agni_.’ He’s panting into her craven kisses, heaving breaths from the heated air between them. Her paralysed fingers release his hips long enough to reach for the v of the neckline over his shoulder blades. Without a second thought, she rips it until the shift falls around Zuko’s waist and her breasts— _his_ breasts— all taut and curved, spill into her hands.

The sound he makes as she tweaks them sends jolts to her crotch. Liquid weeps out of her— out of—

‘Do that again,’ he gasps, eyes squeezed closed.

It’s too easy, really. Who knows this body and its pathways to pleasure better than she? But the aching in her cock isn’t interested in nipples and breasts. The front of her pants are damp where Zuko is grinding against her and she’s hot, so hot…

‘Are you okay?’

Katara nods, jerkily, nearly clipping his chin as she does. He’s peering at her, his eyes nearly black, pupils swallowing that daytime blue.

He presses a hand against her forehead, cheek, neck, swearing under his breath. ‘It’s okay, I’ve got you.’

But he shifts backwards off her lap. ‘No,’ she manages, her voice low, strangled. _Don’t go_ , she means to say, but words are impossible things in that moment. Her fingers close around his arm instead.

‘It’s okay.’ Zuko brushes kisses to her lips, her jaw, kisses that contain teeth to the sensitive skin of her neck. His hands are shaking at her waist, tugging and yanking at the ties to her pants. ‘I’ve got you.’

She shudders when his hand slips into the loose waistband and pulls her cock free, as he strokes it with a focused ease, his eyes never leaving hers. Her skin is feverish, the head of the flesh in Zuko’s hands— _her_ hands— an angry red; clear liquid leaks from the tip. Each pass of his hands makes it a little harder to breathe, her breath is ragged as waves crashing on the shore.

‘Does that— Is that good?’ he’s panting, his movements strong, sure. Practiced.

She watches his rhythm in amazement; the blood from his hand is smeared along— it’s coating her—

‘Is this how you touch yourself?’ she manages, her voice low as dirt. Lower. She’s subterranean and it forms a knot of tension in her belly.

He doesn’t slow and the building pressure low in her stomach begins to burn. ‘Yes.’ He presses a kiss to her shoulder. _I know what this body likes_ , he says without words, but Katara is the one in the body and she knows now that anything the blue eyes and dusky hands do to this body would set it on fire.

She cums with an unfamiliar suddenness, with a blinding pleasure that forces a strangled grunt from her throat. It’s a singular roil that steals the strength from her body so much so that she lists to one side, barely aware of the splatter of liquid leaking onto her belly.

In the space between blinking her vision blurs and she is no longer satiated, softening, reclining. Instead she’s wound tight, the pearl of nerve between her thighs _aching_.

And she’s clutching Zuko’s cock in one hand.

He looks up at her, eyes soft, hooded. ‘You… You’re you.’

She shivers, withdrawing her bloodied hand, smearing the droplets of cum against her skin. Zuko follows her retreat, pressing her back until her head hits the foot of the bed.

‘What—?’

‘Sh.’ He crawls forward, throwing her legs over his shoulders. His breath burns against her aching core. ‘My turn.’

—

The next morning, Katara is halfway to her meeting with the shipbuilder’s guild when her vision blurs and she finds herself seated in the Firelord’s council meeting, in his skin once more. She bluffs her way through the councillors’ complaints by imagining all the ways they would find later to force themselves back to their own bodies…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, technically Katara just got to cum in Zuko’s body then again in her own. That’s where this filth is at. We’re going to hell together but what a ride.
> 
> (Potentially one more chapter to go to wrap up the tenuously there "plot")


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beneath her, something hard twitches against her backside.
> 
> ‘Sorry,’ he mutters and he’s staring at her hips or his fingers there drawing circles in her skin. ‘It— I’m sorry it happens so often… when you’re around.’
> 
> She knows something about the insatiability of his body.
> 
> She knows quite a lot of somethings about it.
> 
> ‘Having such showy genitals must be hard,’ she says with a straight face, but she laughs when he shoots her an affronted look. ‘It happens to me, too, you just can’t tell as easily.’
> 
> ‘When you sit like this I can.’
> 
> ‘How do you know it’s not just the bath water?’
> 
> Zuko smirks and secrets lurk at the corners of his lips. ‘I know the difference between water and a wet waterbender.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This crack-that-is-taking-itself-way-too-seriously is brought to you by my 400th follower giveaway over on Tumblr! In an unexpected series of events… I am now almost at 500 followers. This is awkward. I didn’t expect it to happen in the two weeks I was running this 400-follower-fic-giveaway thing. So this final instalment in the Trash Trilogy counts for both— happy 400/500 follower celebration, me?
> 
> Anyhow. People voted for this. Horny, horny people.

‘It’s _everywhere_.’

‘Just open the door.’

‘ _Everywhere_ , Katara.’

She butts her head against the Firelord’s privy, closing her eyes— the healthy and the scarred one. She’s in his skin again and the timing couldn’t be worse. She’d assumed they had reached the maximum mortification last week when he’d had to blow her in the servant’s staircase to switch back just before his solstice season address to the people of the city. The rush of pleasure accompanying an orgasm never failed to right them, sending Katara back into her own bones and Zuko into his.

But honestly, backroom quickies are child’s play compared to talking your friend through the heaviest day of his first period.

‘This would be so much easier if you just let me in,’ she sighs against the door, her voice scratchy. She’s becoming accustomed to the way this body’s voice gets all low and deep after sunset, the way moonrise and wine make this body tingle instead of coming alive, makes it slow right down.

What might be a faint whimper sounds from the bathroom.

‘Zuko?’

‘I think there’s something… wrong. It _hurts_. It _really_ hurts. And there’s a _solid_ … a solid just came out.’

‘Yes, a clot. That’s normal.’

A pause—

— followed by a litany of swearing.

‘I don’t know how to deal with this,’ comes the beleaguered voice.

She would laugh if she wasn’t so annoyed at being locked out. ‘Let me in or I swear to the Moon I’ll burn down the door!’

Cursing, she can hear cursing. ‘Wait— _Agni!_ — Just wait! I don’t want to get blood on the door.’

She frowns, mouthing, _Blood on the door?_

_How?_

The lock clicks and the door rattles open.

Katara winces.

It’s… not a pretty sight.

He’s holding his hands out, away from his body— _her_ body— as though they’re in quarantine. Possibly because they’re covered in blood. She can see her Water Tribe leggings over by the bath but the man in her flesh has stripped down to her rough spun white shift which he has managed to slough with crimson smears.

There’s another blood stain on his right forearm, a third spotting the inside of his thighs.

‘Oh, Zuko.’

She really shouldn’t laugh, but he’s covered in period blood as though he’s the sole survivor of a massacre and his expression is _killing_ her.

‘I fail to see how this is funny!’

It doesn’t stop her laughing but she does catch the door when he tries to slam it in her face. ‘Okay, okay! Sheesh! Let me in, this is sort of my area of expertise.’

‘Not if you’re going to laugh at me!’

She opens her mouth to retort but stops herself; she knows all too well how touchy she gets on day two of her cycle…

‘I’m sorry, I won’t laugh.’

‘It’s not funny!’

‘No, it’s not.’

He glares at her, eyes glassy and cheeks red. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’ He curses and wipes at his eyes. ‘And your body keeps _leaking._ From _everywhere_.

‘She’s complex,’ Katara agrees, stepping forward and closing the door behind them both. ‘Let’s run the bath, that will help. Trust me.’

Zuko stands rigidly, one hand clutching his pelvic bowl while she moves around the bathroom. First to the tub, manually turning the taps in lieu of her own bending— firebending is useless for domesticity, she’s discovering; except for lighting candles, there’s little use for fire in everyday life. She turns the hot water tap right up; nothing works better for cramps than something warm— a bath, a cup of tea, a heated seal skin. Once steam is curling from the bath, she turns to the stiff figure in the centre of the room, breathing deeply the way he’s been teaching her.

On the exhale, she feels heat radiate from her palms.

‘Here,’ she offers, brushing his hands out of the way to set these larger, warmer hands against the tender flesh above his pubic bone. ‘Cramps?’

‘I don’t know how you do this every month,’ he says tightly, glaring over her head. ‘You _work_ in this state.’

‘Most women do.’

He relaxes enough that she risks it.

Keeping one hand over his stomach, she lifts the shift with the other, pulling it up over his head before he can protest. ‘What are you—’

She clicks her tongue at the stained shift. ‘We’ll have to soak this. Did it get on anything else?’ He glances at the clothes behind him, surly with guilt. ‘It’s okay. It’s your first one. Everyone’s first period is hard.’

‘My back hurts.’

‘I know.’

‘And I want to cry.’

‘You already have.’

‘And I’m…’ He glances away. ‘I’m just feeling a lot.’

She smiles up at him; she can relate. ‘It can suck, I know.’ Getting to her feet, she takes his hand and tugs him over to the tub. ‘I promise you, a hot bath will help.’

She twists the taps off while Zuko sheds the sarashi which is _also_ — somehow— bloodstained. He’s stepping into the steaming water when she catches him watching her lift the heavy shoulder mantle, shed the outer of her formal robes. Their eyes meet and they share _that_ look, the one they’ve exchanged dozens of times now; the one that tries desperately to mask this giddy thrill of anticipation as necessity, as something to be endured.

Neither of them is convinced.

‘Help me with this tie?’ she asks quietly and bends down beside him to offer her right shoulder where the undershirt is knotted. He raises slicked arms, leaning upwards, to pick at the tie. The only sound in all the room is that of water dripping from Zuko’s skin back into the bath.

Katara searches desperately for something, anything, with which to fill the heavy silence. _Anything_.

‘Did you know your secretary is seeing your maid— what’s her name? The one with the east islander accent who always looks at Sokka eating like she’s personally offended by it?’

‘Kyami. And she _is_ personally offended by it. I had her teach him to use chopsticks last year, but he _still_ refuses to.’ His fingers at her shoulder still. ‘Wait, _she’s_ dating Tenla?’

‘You didn’t know?’ She tries not to sound smug, she really does.

‘I had no idea they even knew each other.’

‘Zuko, they _work_ together. Of course, they know each other.’

The shirt front falls open under his practiced fingers. ‘How did you find out? You’ve been me all day. Did you catch them together?’

Katara shrugs— mostly to hide the shiver that scrawls along her skin. This body is wired so strangely; so numb to ponds and the rain and the liquid in teacups but painfully sensitive to her own body’s touch. It lives in action, the need to _do_ — whether that is sitting in the stillness of mediation or burning through a bending form or solving a dispute of politics. This body is firebender through and through.

So it should not surprise her that every muscle, every nerve, is focused exclusively on the fingertips lingering at her collarbones.

And yet…

‘Katara?’

What did he ask? Something about…

‘How did you find out about Kyami and Tenla?’

_Focus, Katara_.

She stands, pulling away from that distracting touch to shed her final layer of clothing. With her back to Zuko in the bath, she can gather her thoughts— and hide the embarrassing erection jutting from between her legs. Being a man is _terrible_.

‘Kyami and I got talking this afternoon.’

‘Talking?’

Granted, it took some time for the older woman to open up to her boss and Firelord, but after a cup of sake in Zuko’s study together, the maid had been more than forthcoming.

‘We just… chatted. I think she thought I was coming onto her at first… or that, err, you were coming onto her. But after the second sake—’

‘ _Sake?!_ ’

She glances at him over her shoulder, rubbing the back of her neck. ‘Ah, only two.’

Her firebender’s glower burns at her even from behind blue eyes. ‘Stop making friends with my staff!’

‘No! _You_ should have made the effort to get to know them ages ago!’

‘Firelords don’t drink with their maids!’

‘Wrong. One did today.’

‘Urg!’ There’s a splash from behind her and Katara turns to see Zuko pinch the bridge of his nose— well, technically _her_ nose but seeing as how she commandeered his body this afternoon to drink with the maid, she’s not going to make a big deal of it.

She slips into the bath while he isn’t looking. The Firelord’s bath is spacious, and for that Katara is grateful; she sits quickly and drifts backwards until her back hits the edge and only her leg touches the firebender-in-her skin who is, predictably, glowering at her.

She sighs, slumping down into the warmth of the water’s embrace. ‘I miss my own bending,’ she mutters, trailing a finger along the surface of the bath.

‘I miss not bleeding from my genitals.’

_That_ makes her laugh. ‘Have you just been hiding out here all day? I _was_ supposed to have a meeting with the healer’s guild, you know?’

‘I cancelled it.’

‘At least _I_ make an effort when we switch! You’ve cancelled on the shipbuilders _four times_ , you realise!’

He’s smirking ironically now, reclined against the back of the tub. ‘It’s annoying when someone meddles in your work life, isn’t it?’

_Oh_ , he’s _dead_ once they switch back.

‘I don’t see you doing anything about it.’ She raises a brow at him; challenging. ‘You know how to switch back.’

‘But I’m…’ He gestures to his hips and below.

‘So?’ She holds his ambivalence while his eyes try to decide between hers and staring at her lips. ‘Want to know a secret? It’s going to make it much, _much_ easier for you to cum.’

And she’s right.

It is.

—

They learn something in the sloshing bath water.

They do not understand it.

They do not know what it is or how to name it.

Not yet.

But it looks like Zuko rubbing his thumb across her cheek as he rides her; it looks like Katara not looking away as she cums inside of him.

They learn something in the bath.

The ancient ice shamans would be proud.

—

Afterwards is always easier.

There’s the briefest period in which they know where they stand with one another— no confusion or awkwardness or hesitance like _before_. _Afterwards_ … Katara’s beginning to really look forward to afterwards.

They linger in the bath, bodies aligned from hip to shoulder. She’s hitched a leg over his waist, their fingers entwined while they press slow drugging kisses into each other’s lips. The water feels _alive_ again and the heat of Zuko’s touch is like nothing else. That dissonance between her thoughts and desires warring with the wants of his flesh is gone here encased within her own skin and she shudders under the firebender’s lazily explorative kisses.

This might be the best afterwards yet.

She untangles her tongue from his only long enough to reposition, to free her hand from his and run it through his wet hair. She really likes this Zuko of _afterwards_ — he isn’t quite the Zuko she’s familiar with; the Firelord, her friend. He is softened edges and midday shade and he has this smile she’s never seen before, this unguarded, secretive smile that just makes her—

‘What?’ He mumbles the word against her lips, tugging her nearer again.

He probably means _What are you looking at?_ but she doesn’t know how to answer that to his face. Despite everything that’s happened between them she still…

Not yet.

‘Tired,’ she answers instead, butting her nose against his; she can’t help the stupid grin permanently glued to her face. ‘Warm.’

‘Mm.’ The fingers tracing her spine begin to travel lower, press heat into her lower back. ‘How’s your back? The cramps?’

‘Better actually. Sex helps, sometimes.’

‘Really?’

She nods, steals another kiss, then another.

‘If it becomes a problem again, you can always use my firebending.’ He means his hands. She opens her eyes, catches the sly look in his eyes. ‘Or whatever parts of me can help.’

The blush blooming in her cheeks doesn’t stop her smiling. ‘Can I now?’

‘It would be my honour.’

She rolls her eyes at that but it's playful not provoking. It’s _afterwards_ ; she doesn’t want to ruin it, this sweet vulnerability thrumming between them. How long can she keep it this time, she wonders? How long can she keep him?

‘It hurts here,’ she tells him seriously, pointing to her cheek and only her lip twitching gives her away.

The Firelord is sunshine gravity when he leans up to kiss the spot. ‘Anywhere else?’

‘Here.’

Behind her ear.

He pulls her nearer, presses kisses— ten of them, twenty— to her ear, her neck. ‘Mm?’

‘Mm.’

‘If you stay, I’ll kiss you wherever you like,’ he murmurs into her hair and her heart thuds in her throat.

She’s tongue-tied; he wants her to stay? The night? He wants…

‘Okay,’ she chokes out.

‘Really?’ She can hear the smile in his voice even if she can’t see it. She wonders if it’s the new smile, the secret _afterwards_ smile but she’s too content here flush against him to raise her head and check.

‘Sure. My own personal firebender for period cramps? How could I say no?’

He chuckles at that, it’s dry and raspy and vibrates in his chest. ‘Come on. Let’s go to bed. _You_ might be able to sleep in water but I’m turning into a sea prune.’

She worries that disentangling will disturb the _afterwards_ waters, that they’ll drain away like a bath and he’ll retreat to her friend Zuko. She doesn’t want to quite let go of this Zuko yet, she isn’t done bruising herself on his softness.

So she sits up slowly, straddles his waist and lets her fingers wind down over the slippery skin of his torso. She’s probably bleeding on him but can’t quite find it in herself to care just now. His body is one thing, she’s worn it dozens of times this summer, knows exactly its strength and weaknesses but the man behind the skin and scars…

She thought she knew him.

Turns out there’s a lot more to know.

Beneath her, something hard twitches against her backside.

‘Sorry,’ he mutters and he’s staring at her hips or his fingers there drawing circles in her skin. ‘It— I’m sorry it happens so often… when you’re around.’

She knows something about the insatiability of his body.

She knows quite a lot of somethings about it.

‘Having such showy genitals must be hard,’ she says with a straight face, but she laughs when he shoots her an affronted look. ‘It happens to me, too, you just can’t tell as easily.’

‘When you sit like this I can.’

‘How do you know it’s not just the bath water?’

Zuko smirks and secrets lurk at the corners of his lips. ‘I know the difference between water and a wet waterbender.’

_Does he now?_

She doesn’t know how to respond to that. Not at all. She is reduced to the heat in her cheeks and the throb of her pulse between her legs.

She’s not sure when she started but she’s gyrating her hips against him, against the full length of him. His hands are the only parts of him that move, bearing her down as she presses back, guiding her forward as she pursues that addictive pressure on the pearl of nerves between her thighs.

‘Again, waterbender?’ His _voice_ , spirits.

She presses down harder at the butterflies his voice raises in her belly. ‘Mm.’

At her assent, he sits up, forcing her back into his lap. Through the kiss he’s searing onto her lips he growls, ‘Get up.’

She nearly trips over the lip of the bath in her hurry to obey.

It’s only when they stumble, dripping, against the bathroom door frame that she realises he’s aiming for the bed.

‘No,’ she tries to tell him, not to make him stop, but there are _logistics_ he’s obviously not aware of here. Logistics about bleeding and bedsheets. ‘I’ll stain them. Let’s just—’

His hands are already cupping her rear so it takes very little effort for him to tighten his grip, lift her and spill her over the crimson coverlet. ‘Don’t care.’

_She_ cares. What will the servants think? What will—

But he’s flicking one of her nipples with his thumb, the other with his tongue, and his free hand is wandering down her stomach to where they grind together. Where she burns.

Where…

He slips just the tip of himself inside her; it’s not complete, this coiling half-pleasure. Why won’t he push all the way— _spirits, just_.

‘Please,’ she opens her eyes to gasp, trying to wriggle further onto him, trying to press him further in but Zuko has an iron grip on her hips and the thin ring of gold around his wide pupils is viper-sharp and watching her. ‘Zuko!’

_In_ , she thinks without quite knowing how to ask for it. _Spirits, please in!_

But he is the furthest thing from her impatience.

The firebender is slowly, casually, thrusting the head of his cock, and the head of his cock only, into her. It’s maddening. It’s the best thing she’s felt. It’s not enough. _It’s not nearly enough_. He’s pressing himself _just_ inside of her— teasing, shallow thrusts that have her far, far too worked up.

Way too close too soon. And without touching her pearl; she _never_ gets this close without attention to that little bundle of nerves.

‘Zuko!’ she demands, trying in vain to push him deeper.

_Spirits, please just_ _—_

‘Yes?’ Oh, she’s going to get him back for this. His voice is teasing, dark, and steady as mountains while she’s here drowning in the most turbulent ocean waves.

She glowers at him, wrapping her legs around him; maybe if she just _pulls_ —

‘What do you want?’

He _knows_ what she wants.

She knows he does.

But here in this bleary labyrinth of frustrated pleasure where _fuck me properly_ is her only coherent thought she can’t quite find the words to articulate that he’s _teasing_ and she needs…

Zuko slips deeper for a moment, one glorious moment that has Katara gasping, back arching—

Before he retreats, the head of him shallow once more; teasing her opening. She wants to cry.

Only this time, he has both of her ankles in one hand. With a grin that should rightly reduce her to smouldering ashes, he presses her legs back towards her head, far enough that she gasps at the strain.

‘That okay?’ he asks, and she’s gratified that he doesn’t sound quite as in control as he did.

‘Fine— good, just— _please_.’

He leans forward then, and she understands why he’s doubled her over like this.

She can _feel_ the swollen, exposed lips of her cunt, the leverage he has when he thrusts _up_ like that—

‘ _Fuck._ ’

The expletive, the ruined voice that growls it, the chip in his self-control— it’s a whole meal and she could gorge herself on it.

‘You look… so fucking good like this.’

He dips deeper, strokes her harder. She wishes she could _see_ ; she wants to see—

Her gaze meets his over the bend in her knees, the rise of her thighs; there are wildfires in his eyes. He’s coming undone. Finally. She’s incoherent, overwhelmed, but when _Zuko_ gets lost in their coupling… he tells her things, dirty things. Things that she knows he’s too polite to say otherwise. Something inside of her tightens; she _loves_ when he comes undone like this.

‘Your cunt _ruins_ me.’ His thrusts are deeper now, achingly deep and he’s trying to angle them to her spot— _that_ spot— but with the way he’s breathing she knows he’s— ‘ _Fuck_ , I love your little red cunt, all puckered up for me, stretched tight all around me like this. Red looks good on you. _Fuck_ , Katara. So good.’

He’s bearing her legs further back and the way it tilts her pelvis, the long, drugging, igniting thrusts… She’s…

‘You— _oh!_ — feel so good,’ she hears herself tell him. It must be her, who else could it be, but that voice— that aching, dishevelled voice— can’t possibly be her own.

He bends her over further, kisses her sloppily, greedily. ‘I love your hungry little cunt, your big round arse— _urg_ — and you like that, don’t you? You like it when I’m deep inside you. Greedy waterbender with the beautiful bleeding cunt.’

She does. She really, really does.

He’s fucking her like she’s the cure to everything wrong in his life, firebending something hot and building inside of her.

‘I want to cum inside this pretty little pussy, watch it bleed out of you.’

It’s too much.

She cums with a suddenness that shocks her.

And a gush of liquid around Zuko’s cock.

_Fuck_.

Her legs shake nearly out of his grasp— he has to slow down, to pause— while she convulses around him, squirts around him, too lost in the decadence of lightning waves and rolling thunder within her flesh to care. It’s _indescribable_ , this watery orgasm. It shatters her awareness of anything outside of her body and his and the pulsing, racing, blinding release shuddering through her system.

Zuko mutters something that’s either cussing or encouragement or both before he’s fucking her in earnest. He lets her legs go, lets them wilt over his left shoulder, and tugs her closer. Her hips are halfway off the bed in his grip. He sets a punishing pace, groaning when he stutters and finishes inside of her.

Katara watches him with a deep satisfaction, reaching out to thread her fingers through his hair where it hangs from his bowed head. It isn’t often they get to do this from their own bodies; it isn’t often they allow themselves these orgasms of whimsy rather than necessity.

She’s going to make a point of insisting on it more often.

Zuko stirs after a moment, pulls out, and Katara sighs. _Afterwards_. A second afterwards.

She glows at the thought.

—

She only figures it out because of this hellishly early switch. It’s barely past sunrise and the High Fire Sage is droning, the temple full of incense, the nobility kneeling. Prayers are whispered over beads clutched between fingers; the very same beads clutched in her own hands.

Oh spirits.

She had been enjoying that lie in, wrapped in silk sheets and an early morning doze.

Now she’s the Firelord at temple.

Spectacular.

As it turns out, the spirits agree.

There is a dislocating moment of vertigo as the Fire Sage begins speaking of Chaos. A shiver of sea spray down her spine; for some reason she thinks of that night, weeks ago now, when she cut open her and Zuko’s hands in an effort to summon the spirits of her people.

A disembodied voice breathes a chuckle in her ear, whispers, ‘ _Listen and learn, young waterbender.’_

‘Fearing her power,’ the Fire Sage interrupts, ‘Agni bound the Spirit of Chaos to the belly of Sister Volcano, to the white waters of Brother Tsunami and said unto these Steads of Destruction, _Your Mistress must bide her time until you are broken upon the shores of men. Only then may she wreak strife upon the world_.

‘After the eruption and resulting tsunami in the easternmost isles of our great nation during the summer solstice, Lady Chaos has been sowing discord into the hearts and minds of the good people of this country…’

Katara’s firebender mouth goes dry at that.

Lady Chaos has been sowing discord into hearts and minds alright. And people’s bodies.

And their penises.

Zuko is pacing angrily before the door to the temple when Katara emerges half an hour later. He’s clearly been there a while so she fails to understand why he couldn’t have put a _little_ more effort into braiding her hair or actually dressing correctly for her station. Tui and La, she’s _spoken_ to him about this—

‘The shawl goes _over_ the slip, not under it,’ she growls in his rasping voice as she draws near.

‘Because that’s the most important thing right now.’

Honestly, she could have him arrested right now and literally no one around them would stop her. It’s tempting. ‘I have a reputation, you know. You could at least _try_ to help me out here, Zuko. You don’t see me running around with your stupid crown braided into your chest hair!’

The Ministers Ping, Yao, and Uroh shoot her a politely mystified look as they pass.

Zuko curses under his breath and jerks his head back towards the now-empty temple.

‘Keep your voice down,’ he hisses at her as they make their way across the courtyard and through the great temple doors. ‘My reputation matters, too!’

‘Then start dressing like it!’

He scoffs but he also yanks the rumpled shawl loose and pulls his navy robes straight. ‘Happy?’

‘Now we’re in private where no one else can see? Yes, Zuko, I’m _overwhelmed_ with gratefulness.’ She doesn’t even try to hide her irritability. ‘You _better_ not have bled on everything I own again.’ She knows that look; he’d be breathing flames if they were in their right bodies. Which is sort of the point. They’re not in their right bodies; only she now has an inkling as to why. ‘Your Grand Fire Wizard or whatever he calls himself talks a lot, but in amongst the vaguely inappropriate nationalism, he said something that got me thinking—’

‘Fire _Sage_. _High_ Fire Sage. He’s a hundred and three, and _no_ your angry genitals haven’t ruined all your clothes yet.’

‘—and I believe our summoning has finally borne fruit.’

He is still glowering at her. ‘Summoning?’

‘The kiss of blood. That ritual from the Old Stories.’

He remembers, she can see that he can. The bone knife is back in her room, their blood safely encased in their veins, but Katara’s palm tingles where the scabbed-over scar bisects it.

‘What do you mean our “summoning bore fruit?” Who talks like that?’

‘Ancient ice shamans.’ She narrows her eyes at him. ‘And I wouldn’t be second guessing them right now because I’m pretty sure they’re the only way to get your crazy Fire Nation Chaos Spirit to leave us be.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Katara leans back, indulges herself in a short moment of self-pity before beginning to outline her theory.

—

‘I thought you said that our blood sacrifice thing meant that your spirits could move mountains.’

‘We don’t need mountains moved,’ she reminds him, patience quickly dwindling. ‘We only need one of us to stop thinking with their genitals and start thinking with their brains.’

They glower at each other.

‘I _know_ you’re implying you’re the one with the brain.’

‘Some Fire Nation chaos spirit is messing with our bodies, of course I’m going to figure out how to stop it!’

‘Not just some chaos spirit,’ Zuko says grimly. ‘ _The_ Spirit of Chaos. If she entered the world when that volcano erupted and has decided to wreak havoc on us…’

‘Nuh-uh,’ Katara tells him bluntly. ‘Nope. You can take that gloomy attitude and you can stick it. I’m figuring us a way out of this. I’m not spending the rest of my life having sex with my own body everyday just so I can get back into it.’

‘Agreed.’

She studies him with scholarly interest. Or she likes to pretend it’s scholarly. Only, that’s not quite true, is it? They’d admitted as much, weeks ago now…

‘Do you remember what I told you about the stories of my people?’

‘The ancient ice shamans that liked orgies?’

‘ _Sacred_ orgies,’ she defends, cheeks flaming. ‘Sacred, ancient orgies. They used to heal people with the magic of sex, you know? They learned secrets they wouldn’t even commit to paper; it's mentioned a hundred times in our histories but they never said exactly what it was they learned…’

‘Maybe it was the learning itself.’

She looks up sharply. ‘What?’

Zuko shrugs and fiddles with the hair curling over his shoulders. ‘Your stories got me thinking, so I looked into the archives and found myths about the Priestesses of the Inner Flame. They took spirits for lovers and learned secrets that… changed them. None of the accounts say how, only that they opened themselves to greater wisdom and…’

‘Changed.’

He looks at her then, guarded but… ‘Yes.’

‘The Water Tribe stories say that the energy generated between the lovers…’

‘The energy generated between the lovers?’

‘They say it could make impossible things happen.’

He’s silent then, watching her vigilantly, and she knows somehow what he’s thinking. Perhaps she is already following those ancient practices of her ancestors, learning the firebender just as he’s learning her, only she’s not so sure the learning is only bodies and kisses anymore.

Not when her heart beats like this.

And he’d _told_ her already, hadn’t he? Weeks ago now…

_‘I’ve liked you for a long time.’_

_‘How long?’_

_He clenches his teeth and looks away to say, ‘A while.’_

_‘How long?’_

_‘Years, Katara.’_

_She is struck dumb._ Years? _He’s liked her for years? Years spent with what’s-his-name, the earthbender with golden eyes and a laugh that reminded her of_ _—_

_‘Will you say something?’_

_‘I was just thinking I wasted so much time thinking you weren’t interested. Zuko, I’ve wanted you since I was fifteen, when you took lightning for me.’_

They haven’t spoken about it. They haven’t even _acknowledged_ it: the confession. They’ve kept themselves busy with bodies and bickering— safe grounds, well-fertilised with familiarity. Her nitpicking his attempts to dress her body, him growling out reprimands when she makes the Firelord publicly support policy he hasn’t yet agreed to. It’s comfortable here because they cannot bruise anything more than their knees in the bedroom or their political standing in the halls of government.

It’s left their hearts unmolested, distant. Protected.

So when Katara says, _The stories say that the energy generated between the lovers could make impossible things happen_ and Zuko remembers her whispering, _I’ve wanted you since I was fifteen, when you took lightning for me_ they each fall silent because they _know_. They’ve learned a thing or two about each other now, enough to pause and acknowledge the trench of unspoken things between them.

The trench is full, brimming with tales of ancient ice shamans who listened to the wisdom of flesh, who learned the lessons of a stranger’s heart, a stranger’s muscle memory. The trench is overflowing with a hundred memories of passion, the kind that moans and quivers and cums.

But there are whole trench caverns labelled _love_ that are unexplored, unspoken between them.

Lessons still to learn.

‘You’ve got a meeting with the Minister and Shadow Minister of Defence in a few minutes.’ He breaks the silence, breaching the unexplored territory. There’s an exhilarating vulnerability in his eyes, one she is sure is mirrored in her own. ‘Cancel it.’

This terrifying softness… she doesn’t know what to do with it. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’ The truth is, the Minister and Shadow Minister will be relieved; they thought they were going to be chewed out.

Neither Firelord nor Ambassador know this.

They’re just following the wisdom of flesh, sacred pathways of the body that speak with much-needed certainty while both their hearts tremble.

‘Alright.’ She steps nearer, stares down at him through his own eyes— the left one really is terrible. It’s a miracle he can see through it at all. ‘Then…’

‘My room,’ he says, and the smile is so entirely Zuko she wonders how no one has caught them out yet. ‘I’ll have breakfast brought to the balcony.’

‘Breakfast?’ She is grinning too; her insides are made of shimmering sunshine. ‘Is this a date?’

‘An offering to the spirit that is making us switch bodies.’

She laughs at that, at him— Zuko— teasing her with her own words. ‘A prayer, a holy act.’

He’s spellbound, caught on her every word. ‘Exactly.’

‘Kiss me.’

‘I thought you said this was a prayer?’

‘The prayers of my people take many forms.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has a revolting amount of heart for a crack fic. A revolting amount of heart.
> 
> You might think Lady Chaos is inspired by a figure from mythology, such as Eris— Greek Goddess of Chaos, Discord, and Strife. You would think wrong. Lady Chaos is a hellish combination of a few friends of mine (who better see this author’s note because I absolutely want their rageful reaction at the call-out in my DMs later on). Credit for the actual plot points in this chapter sits squarely with goldilocks23 and ifyouwereamelody who listened to me bleat about this story on more than one occasion.
> 
> The Trash Trilogy is over! What a ride!
> 
> How did we feel about period!Zuko? In fact, how did we feel altogether about this little story?? Let me know in the comments— I am in this fic writing game to get better at writing so your feedback is worth more than gold to me, people! What did you like? What didn’t you like? I’d dearly like to know :)

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to partially blame airiustide, RideBoldlyRide, MarkedMage, and goldilock23 for this seeing the light of day. And by partially, I mean entirely -.-


End file.
